I wonder how many top notch US researchers would be interested in living in Australia? Surely just 10% of the budget for those silly submarines could fund a lot of world class research here.
I know this may seem unrelated, but here in Aotearoa our current government has cut funding to The Marsden fun which was basically a pool of money that went into scientific research in technology & the humanities amongst other things. It all follows a broader trend of governments(regimes) attempting to seize access to information & education. This is not good.
In a different world, I would love to see this as a great opportunity for Australia as part of The Rest of the World - the opportunity to capture the brain drain that will be flowing from the US, just as the US was recipient of the European brain drain in the 1930's. Let's set up an emergency fund, as we did for COVID, to capture this truly unique opportunity - to make a substantial national investment into vital knowledge and to turn Australian into the Clever Country we've always said we aspire to be. The alternative is to lose so much.
We have ditched our planned trip to a Washington conference in June despite having a son and new grandchild up in New York. We just don't want to go there.
I work for UQ, not as an academic, but I've been wringing my hands wondering if there's any way they can touch us. I guess this is it. Universities outside the US absolutely need to forge partnerships elsewhere - any institution that bends to Trump ideologically to keep their funding is a hive of cowards.
I heard an American academic on a podcast recently (can’t recall the name sorry) who put it something like this - “don’t change your fundamental values to accommodate authoritarian demands; as soon as you do that, the institution you’re trying to protect is in fact already lost”. The speed with which some rush to bend the knee makes one question what their real values were in the first place.
Whilst I applaud efforts for Australian academic institutions to collaborate with European researchers, if the only criteria is to access European Horizon funding to replace US funding, then maybe Australia should step up it's own research funding instead!
The question may have declining relevance,,but what is the legal basis if any of this latest Trump outrage? The federal US government does not charter universities, accredit them, or pay their permanent staff. It subsidizes tuition fees generously but inefficiently, since there are no strong mechanisms for preventing universities from capturing the subsidy through higher fees. It also subsidises research on a huge scale through much more hands-on project grants from the NSF, NIH and other agencies like DARPA. I assume the initiative JQ is talking about comes from the research side.
Australian universities, and those in other countries, should flatly reject the request. International scholarly collaboration is a core part of academic freedom, interpreted as the developed version of freedom of speech in the scholarly context. The right of governments to interfere with this aspect of scholarly life is limited to national security (eg research related to nuclear weapons). Doubtful cases - Israel, China - can probably be best decided by individuals and their universities, It is legitimate to promote institutionalized international collaboration, as the EU does, to support general policy objectives like diversifying the research base. I suggest this support need not be completely country-neutral. If Australia wants to join Horizon, it has to make a case in Brussels why this is in the EU's interest. Looks doable.
I'm not going to tell US authorities anything in case I get caught in transit en route to Canada or elsewhere. But the cancellation of large numbers of conferences and meetings should give them a hint.
The omb control order was signed by Peter marocco in the state department (https://omb.report/icr/202503-1405-001/doc/original/154030701.pdf) . He was also responsible for the freeze on us-aid according to Wikipedia. I suspect that this is info gathering and will be used to strip funding from US researchers and institutions.
The US public universities will follow two strategies about federal funding. The red states (TX, FL) will use their Congressional reps to recover Trump’s budget cuts. The blue states obviously cant do that and will, moreover, be subject to heavy impoundments of their Congressionally approved budgets. The blue states will have to spend their own money and doing that will be the big issue in CA’s gubernatorial election in 2026, with a divide between those who understand reality (e.g., Katie Porter, repeal Prop 13, raise property taxes, loosen housing restrictions, fund own research too make up for the looted Fed money) and those who dont (e.g., Harris, who has no understanding of economics, will run on Obama-style belt tightening).
"There is much ruin in a nation." I'm not sure that four years of Trump will destroy US academic research. German academic research was still going strong in 1937, to pick the obvious historical example. Schrödinger did not leave until 1938; Pauli in 1940. But eight years? That's another matter.
The link to the NYT article on German tourists detained by ICE thugs illustrates why non US citizens will face a high risk if they travel to the US for academic conferences or academic exchanges. So less and less interaction will happen.
I wonder how many top notch US researchers would be interested in living in Australia? Surely just 10% of the budget for those silly submarines could fund a lot of world class research here.
was thinking the same, surely we fund our sector properly and benefit
I know this may seem unrelated, but here in Aotearoa our current government has cut funding to The Marsden fun which was basically a pool of money that went into scientific research in technology & the humanities amongst other things. It all follows a broader trend of governments(regimes) attempting to seize access to information & education. This is not good.
In a different world, I would love to see this as a great opportunity for Australia as part of The Rest of the World - the opportunity to capture the brain drain that will be flowing from the US, just as the US was recipient of the European brain drain in the 1930's. Let's set up an emergency fund, as we did for COVID, to capture this truly unique opportunity - to make a substantial national investment into vital knowledge and to turn Australian into the Clever Country we've always said we aspire to be. The alternative is to lose so much.
We have ditched our planned trip to a Washington conference in June despite having a son and new grandchild up in New York. We just don't want to go there.
Dan and his wife are coming here soon, fortunately, and I guess we can go to Canada and meet them there. But the US is off my destination list.
I work for UQ, not as an academic, but I've been wringing my hands wondering if there's any way they can touch us. I guess this is it. Universities outside the US absolutely need to forge partnerships elsewhere - any institution that bends to Trump ideologically to keep their funding is a hive of cowards.
I heard an American academic on a podcast recently (can’t recall the name sorry) who put it something like this - “don’t change your fundamental values to accommodate authoritarian demands; as soon as you do that, the institution you’re trying to protect is in fact already lost”. The speed with which some rush to bend the knee makes one question what their real values were in the first place.
Whilst I applaud efforts for Australian academic institutions to collaborate with European researchers, if the only criteria is to access European Horizon funding to replace US funding, then maybe Australia should step up it's own research funding instead!
The question may have declining relevance,,but what is the legal basis if any of this latest Trump outrage? The federal US government does not charter universities, accredit them, or pay their permanent staff. It subsidizes tuition fees generously but inefficiently, since there are no strong mechanisms for preventing universities from capturing the subsidy through higher fees. It also subsidises research on a huge scale through much more hands-on project grants from the NSF, NIH and other agencies like DARPA. I assume the initiative JQ is talking about comes from the research side.
Australian universities, and those in other countries, should flatly reject the request. International scholarly collaboration is a core part of academic freedom, interpreted as the developed version of freedom of speech in the scholarly context. The right of governments to interfere with this aspect of scholarly life is limited to national security (eg research related to nuclear weapons). Doubtful cases - Israel, China - can probably be best decided by individuals and their universities, It is legitimate to promote institutionalized international collaboration, as the EU does, to support general policy objectives like diversifying the research base. I suggest this support need not be completely country-neutral. If Australia wants to join Horizon, it has to make a case in Brussels why this is in the EU's interest. Looks doable.
People around the world should stop visiting the United States. And let it be known why.
I'm not going to tell US authorities anything in case I get caught in transit en route to Canada or elsewhere. But the cancellation of large numbers of conferences and meetings should give them a hint.
Yeah. I mean let it be known to others in your country. From the safety of your own home!
Surely chasing a few egghead "scientists" away could never backfire on a country.
The omb control order was signed by Peter marocco in the state department (https://omb.report/icr/202503-1405-001/doc/original/154030701.pdf) . He was also responsible for the freeze on us-aid according to Wikipedia. I suspect that this is info gathering and will be used to strip funding from US researchers and institutions.
The US public universities will follow two strategies about federal funding. The red states (TX, FL) will use their Congressional reps to recover Trump’s budget cuts. The blue states obviously cant do that and will, moreover, be subject to heavy impoundments of their Congressionally approved budgets. The blue states will have to spend their own money and doing that will be the big issue in CA’s gubernatorial election in 2026, with a divide between those who understand reality (e.g., Katie Porter, repeal Prop 13, raise property taxes, loosen housing restrictions, fund own research too make up for the looted Fed money) and those who dont (e.g., Harris, who has no understanding of economics, will run on Obama-style belt tightening).
"There is much ruin in a nation." I'm not sure that four years of Trump will destroy US academic research. German academic research was still going strong in 1937, to pick the obvious historical example. Schrödinger did not leave until 1938; Pauli in 1940. But eight years? That's another matter.
The link to the NYT article on German tourists detained by ICE thugs illustrates why non US citizens will face a high risk if they travel to the US for academic conferences or academic exchanges. So less and less interaction will happen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/world/europe/german-tourists-detained-deported.html?smid=nytcore-android-share